


see night lifted in thine arms

by nex_et_nox



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 08:35:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5861821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nex_et_nox/pseuds/nex_et_nox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Did Felicity ever imagine that she would grow up to become a member of an illegal crime-fighting, magic-wielding vigilante team?</p>
<p>No, not really.</p>
<p>But damn if she wasn’t have a grand time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	see night lifted in thine arms

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sure you can all see my Tamora Pierce influence...
> 
> Anyway. This was supposed to be for Flarrow Femslash Week, which I totally failed at, but here I am a month and a half later, offering it up as a oneshot.

“Oh boy,” Felicity said, pausing in her crafting. Her ever moving fingers stilled, sparks trailing lazily from them and crackling through the air – the air, which was humming over her carefully designed tools and specifically that weapon that she was building. “Ohh, no.”

Felicity grabbed all the tools and papers she could get her hands on in brief few seconds and then she threw herself away from the table. Just in time, too, because that ominous magical hum on the edge of her hearing ratcheted up and there was a flash of sickly yellow light and searing heat. Felicity hit the ground and kept rolling.

“Ow,” Felicity muttered, holding her tools carefully to her chest. Something was digging into her hand, actually – yeah, that would be her whittling knife. Had she been using that? Everything kind of blurred together when she was that focused on crafting. She unclenched her hand from around it, gratified that she had at least mostly grabbed it by the hilt instead of solely by the blade.

Still, that left a decent sized gash in her hand, and on her fingers, ow. It really hurt when she tried to bend them.

Felicity sat up slowly, holding her injured hand in front of her face and carefully raising and shaping healing magic with the other. She wasn’t the best at healing, but she could put herself or others mostly back together in a pinch, so long as it wasn’t too serious. Anything past moderate scrapes and cuts, she generally felt better calling on someone more practiced to deal with it. Like Diggle. He was mostly specialized toward war magic, but he had healing capabilities, ones that were better taught and more practiced than Felicity’s own. She was _not_ specialized toward healing.

As the cuts finished sealing over themselves and Felicity started pushing herself up, she heard a hurried knock on the door. Before she could call out an acknowledgment, Laurel was already in the room.

Felicity squeaked and fell.

“Are you okay?” Laurel asked, offering a hand to help Felicity up and gallantly not laughing at what had been a very ungraceful fall. “I felt a flare and heard a crash…”

“Fine,” Felicity said ruefully. “I’m going to have to clean up my workspace, though. Again.” She sighed, starting to run her fingers through her hair before she remembered that it was caught up in a high tail and switched to adjusting her glasses instead. “That didn’t quite work out the way that I wanted it to.”

“What were you working on?” Laurel asked, obviously interested. She glanced toward the desk where Felicity’s now defunct work was lying.

Felicity hoped her blush wasn’t as apparent as it probably was. Her face felt hot.

“Nothing much, really,” she said nervously. She cleared her throat. “Just – messing around. With things. That are not actually my specialty, but wow, Cisco makes it look so easy and so I thought—” She splayed her fingers, wiggled them, and shrugged.

Laurel was smiling, listening to her, her face soft and open in a way that made Felicity’s heart pick up the pace just slightly. She rubbed her hands against her pants, grimacing when she realized she was probably smearing blood there, and bent over to start gathering up what she had rescued from the table. She didn’t _think_ that any of the papers that had been up there would have been harmed, but she muttered a quick plea under her breath anyway. If all her notes had been incinerated, she might cry.

Calloused hands joined hers, helping to gather spilled items and papers, some of which had been knocked down from one of her other tables or shelves by the small shockwave that had been Felicity’s failed magecraft.

Felicity pointedly didn’t think about what it would be like if she reached out and grabbed one of Laurel’s hands, or even simply brushed against it. It didn’t bear thinking.

“Thanks,” Felicity said, a little breathlessly, as she and Laurel dumped all of the fallen things onto Felicity’s spare table. Felicity had to shove a few books and detritus out of the way before it was clear enough, but that was fine. She had never been too bothered by the lack of organization in her things – especially things on her overflow – because she knew where to find them and that was all that mattered. Though occasionally she did go on cleaning sprees to make sure everything just so, especially when the mixing and clashing energies started to give her headaches from not being separated out properly.

“No problem,” Laurel said easily. “I guess I’ll—” And she gestured toward the door.

“See you later,” Felicity said, a hopeful note creeping into her voice despite herself. Laurel gave her one last grin and then she was gone.

Felicity sat down and put her head and in her hands. This crush was really getting out of control, and she either needed to do something about it or let it die. She’d been nursing it for too long at this point.

A few more days of working on this project, and if it didn’t turn out soon then she would give up on it, and she would have to decide whether to tell Laurel then, with the sting of magical failure behind her and probable romantic failure in front of her, or she could choose to let her crush die with the project.

That was the best way that Felicity knew how to express herself: throwing her magic and knowledge at things. She thought that she and Laurel were friends, but she didn’t want to lose that friendship, and she wasn’t sure how the approach the woman about – how she felt.

Felicity wasn’t good with _people_. She was good with finicky details and ferreting out information; she was good with the simulacra and golems she used to keep watch over the City; she was good at practicing the type of secretive magic that helped Team Arrow, and now it was what she found herself truly interested in. She liked inventing her own spells for admittedly illegal but exciting uses, such as figuring out how to fold her magic or others’ magic in on itself to hide its signature, or untold uses for golems, or working together with Nyssa and Tommy to fold illusions over the vigilantes so they could sneak around unnoticed.

This way, working with what she knew and experimenting with what she didn’t, was how she figured she could get her feelings about Laurel out into the open. They all experimented with the magics they held, always working to improve, but this was a territory that Felicity had never ventured into, and everyone on the team would know it. Felicity didn’t really use weapons, and she didn’t build them either. But this. If she poured her feelings into this work, interlaced them with her magic and intent to keep Laurel safe and then gave them to Laurel – that was the clearest sign that she could give without stating it outright.

Even if Laurel somehow missed it, or didn’t reciprocate, at least it would be out there. And Felicity would always be there for her, working with her.

Felicity took a deep breath, swept off her desk, and got back to work.

* * *

So Felicity had always been pretty aware of her gift, even before she was trained in it. As a child, when she experimented with what little she could do with what few materials she could get her hands on, it translated to being able to spot lies, to cast flickering lights that stayed for hours at a time as she worked late into the night, to hold little protective charms on items to prevent loss or theft. And, on one spectacular instance, lightning.

That time was both awesome and terrifying and was the reason that she ended up being invited to study magic in Starling, one of the most well known Cities with a Court of magic users.

Everyone had some small spark of magic, of course, even if with most people it didn’t exhibit itself as anything more than a helpful knack toward one job or small sixth senses. Nothing big.

Felicity was doing more magic than most people ever dreamed of by the time that she was five, and none of it had been taught to her. It was all instinctual, the kind of outpouring of skill that cropped up sometimes even in generations of people who never had more than a knack until one of their kids was gifted with it suddenly.

Yeah. Felicity was one of those kids. Lucky her.

(She did mean that, though. She was lucky. That she had more magic meant that she was able to get herself and her mom out of the life they had led. It wasn’t a bad life, not really, but growing up Felicity had always hated the tension that etched itself in the corners of her mother’s eyes, how Donna would come home after long days and try to give her daughter a strained smile, no matter how it wore on her.

There were some magic users that had more than a spark, but they were never found, never officially taught, struggling by themselves in a way that no one around them could understand and often not in a position to seek out any kind of training. Still others used their powers for ill, or never found out they had more than average, or, or, or.

Felicity was lucky.)

Starling was – well. It was difficult to describe. It was huge and hollow and glorious and dangerous in its bustling, lumbering movements. It pretended that it wasn’t ripping apart at the seams, it wasn’t an animal slowly dying, like the Court at its center made up for the crumbling ruins that were the Glades.

Even when Felicity arrived in Starling, newly turned ten and so full of curiosity about this City that she had never dreamed of being able to visit, the Glades had been faltering. Failing.

That was nearly a decade ago, a decade and one earthquake, courtesy of the magics of Malcolm Merlyn, but nothing quite overcame that first impression Felicity had of the Glades: it was just like where she had come from.

No one was doing anything about it, not then, but somewhere inside Felicity she had realized that someday, somehow, she wanted to help fix this.

At Court, in the Mastery programs, Felicity fell in with the transfers from Central City, which had a newly build Court that couldn’t quite provide for beginners yet. Barry, Cisco, Caitlin, and Iris were her closest friends – until Central City finished bulking up its Court with sorcerers and mages, finally calling back its children to learn in their home City – but she also managed to become quick friends with Sara Lance and Nyssa al Ghul, who were sickeningly in love and had been together for as long as Felicity knew them. It was through Sara that Felicity met Laurel.

And Oliver and Tommy, but they weren’t as important, no matter how much they, too, had helped to shape her life.

That trio were the most well known cohort of the Court, two years above Felicity and her friends. Oliver and Tommy’s families were both nobility and strong magic users. Laurel’s family wasn’t – the Lances were a professor and a law enforcer, respectively, though still strong with magic that they had passed to their daughters – but Laurel had basically grown up always within the Court because of her parents and so grew up with Oliver and Tommy.

Felicity fell in love at first sight.

Sara, of course, noticed immediately, and looked caught between wanting to pull the most disgusted face and laughing uproariously. She did the latter, of course, and agreed amicably enough when Felicity swore her to secrecy.

It would have been fine. For all that Felicity was friends with Sara and Nyssa (who basically lived with her girlfriend’s family when she wasn’t living within the sheltering walls of the Court), Felicity didn’t actually interact with Laurel all that much. It should have been just a quiet burning in her breast that never went anywhere for the lack of companionship with Laurel.

Then, when Felicity was eighteen and they were all nearing the ends of their education, the cohort having stuck around for post-Mastery studies, Oliver went with his father on a diplomatic mission and he didn’t come back for two long years. When he finally did, he was different. He had always been almost frivolous with his magic and nobility, but in his absence he had become much more serious, restrained. Hard.

Sometimes, Felicity could barely tell that he had magic anymore. Oliver had always been a bright thrum of energy in the air, flashy and joyous and bold, but when he came back, everything was pulled in so tight that it was hard to notice that it was there anymore. And what was there was sharper, edged and just waiting to explode into violence.

So Oliver came back, different. Everyone tried to adjust, wondering how to approach him about it, until it finally ended up being Oliver who approached _them_. He needed as much magical power on his side as he could gather, he explained to them, if he was going to stop what was happening. If they were all going to.

The corruption ran too deep. The Glades had been left to rot for too long. Too many preparations had already been made. But Oliver had a plan and people he hoped he could trust, and they all signed on willingly.

So.

Long story shot, Oliver came back, and then things escalated.

* * *

Did Felicity ever imagine that she would grow up to become a member of an illegal crime-fighting, magic-wielding vigilante team?

No, not really.

But damn if she wasn’t have a grand time.

* * *

Oliver picked the people he had for his team in a mix of who he could trust and the kinds of magic that they needed. As it turned out, Oliver let Felicity be brought into the fold not because he knew her personally or even in anything other than passing as “Nyssa and Sara’s friend,” but because Sara and Nyssa had vouched for her, both her power and her trustworthiness.

Felicity was so incredibly grateful to them, because this was the opportunity to help the City that she had been waiting for, the urge that had taken her when she first stepped foot into Starling. She jumped at the chance to put her magic and skills to use somewhere they could do real, tangible good in the world and realized only after the fact that this would mean she would be working in close quarters with Laurel Lance in the foreseeable future.

On the one hand, awesome. On the other – Felicity was falling in love all over again, if she had ever fallen out of it, and wasn’t that just hell.

Because this time she actually knew her. She knew Laurel: the strength of her conviction, the way that she laughed at Felicity’s jokes and how Felicity’s mouth ran away from her, the dedication to her training, her excitement when she had twisted her magic one day in a fit of experimentation and created her signature Canary Cry.

Felicity knew it all.

* * *

Felicity hung back at the edges of the team as they all stripped themselves of gear and cleaned up after another long night of work. Things were slowly starting to shape up with Starling: everyone in the City was picking themself back up, and with the help of the anchored magic that their team had been scattering around the Glades or those places most affected by Merlyn that were still struggling these months later, as well as their general crime fighting duties, the streets were getting close to how they had been long ago, before Felicity had even come to Starling. The way that things should be in the City.

Sara caught Felicity’s eye and whispered something to Nyssa, and then gave Felicity an encouraging smile as they left. Nyssa’s expression barely changed, but there was something about her face that might have been supportive. Either that or Felicity had done something to annoy her recently, she wasn’t sure.

Soon, it was just her and Laurel. Felicity had been slow shifting her simulacra and golems around the City into a standby mode, deliberately lingering. Laurel had been preoccupied with healing her arm – someone had hit her with a lucky knife.

“Laurel,” Felicity said finally, nervously, approaching the other woman.

Laurel looked up, the dark frown on her face easing into something softer. “Bastard spelled his knife,” she said, shrugging a little and wincing as the movement pulled on the tender, freshly healed wound.

“I have something that might help with that,” Felicity said, and this was the moment. There was no going back after this. She moved her hands from behind her back and held out her creation.

Laurel slowly reached out, pulling the batons from Felicity’s grasp, and moved a few paces away, feeling the weight and heft of them in her hands. She swung one, hard, the way she always practiced with Oliver or Sara or Nyssa, and the runes carefully etched along the edges of them glowed faintly, attuning themselves to her magic, the magic that she put into everything she did.

“Felicity,” Laurel said, stunned. Her expression was awed and so tender, and she looked up to Felicity, who didn’t know what her own face was doing and was only aware of how her fingers twisted together. “This is – incredible.”

Felicity smiled tentatively. “Yeah?”

“Is this what you were working on the other day?”

Laurel was quick. Felicity was impressed by how easily she had picked up on that, but she probably shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Yeah,” Felicity said, for once in her life at a loss of words. Any other moment, she could never control the tumble of words that poured out of her mouth, but in one of the most important conversations she had ever had, she couldn’t think of anything to say. Her mouth was dry.

“This is incredible,” Laurel repeated. “The amount of work you must have put into it—” She flipped the batons around in her hands, making to tuck them away in a pocket in her Black Canary outfit, presumably until she could create actual holsters for them, and twitched the tiniest bit in surprise as the careful runes could sense the intent and faded away to delicate bracelets on her wrists.

“It doesn’t have to be bracelets,” Felicity said, finally finding some words. “I just figured it was the easiest, since it wouldn’t look out of place and they would always be on your wrists right there for you, but a necklace or earrings would work just as well, or if you wanted something other than that, it would be easy to tweak it—”

“It’s perfect,” Laurel said immediately. “I love it. They’re perfectly balanced, and I’ve been looking for a good weapon for a while now, because those escrima sticks are never as good as I want them to be. I just – why? You put so much work into this, just for me.”

“Yes,” Felicity said. Her heart pounded loudly in her ears. “For _you_.”

All the wealth of meaning, the longing that she felt for the woman standing so unsure in front of her, the offer and hope as blatant as she could make it in so few words – it was all out now.

Laurel’s mouth parted slightly, emotions flickering across her face faster than Felicity could read them, before it settled into something vulnerable and pleased and determined. Laurel stepped forward, the bracelet batons jangling slightly on her wrists, and placed her hands in Felicity’s.

“Felicity Smoak,” she said, “Would you like to go out to dinner with me?”

Felicity smiled brightly. “I’d like nothing more.”

* * *

Coda

Two weeks later

 

“So you and Felicity are finally dating,” Sara said, waggling her eyebrows outrageously and leaning against the door to Laurel’s room as Laurel was taking off her earrings and heels after a long day at a trial.

Laurel blushed. “Yes, we’re – wait, what do you mean _finally_?”

Sara started laughing. “She’ll kill me, but you should know that Felicity’s wanted to ask you out since she first arrived in Starling.”

Laurel took a moment to process that. “Oh my god,” she said, sitting down on the edge of her bed, and she could feel her blush spreading even more. “Oh my _god_. That long?”

Sara kept laughing.

“Why didn’t you _tell_ me?” Laurel groaned, resisting the urge to pull a pillow over her face and smother herself with it. She had only been dating Felicity for two weeks, but she had been friends with her for years now – though it had mostly been peripheral and through Sara and Nyssa until Team Arrow had been formed – and Laurel knew that she was already three-quarters of the way in love with Felicity, if she wasn’t totally already.

“She swore me to secrecy,” Sara said pleasantly, not looking in the least repentant.

“Oh my _god_.”


End file.
